On the recordNovember 29, 2016
Mr. President, I rise today to discuss legislation I introduced to eliminate the Electoral College and ensure that the candidate who wins the most votes will be elected President. Clearly, this has nothing to do with this past election. There are recounts going on, and we will see where that goes, but the bottom line is that this looks to the future. The Presidency is the only office in America where the candidate who wins the most votes can still lose the election. There isn't any elected office in the Nation, be it county, city, State, or national level, where this is true. The person who gets more votes--one person, one vote--wins, but that is not true in the Presidential election. I realized how little sense this made many years ago, but when I tried to explain it to my grandkids after this election, they said: Grandma, who won? Well, I told them, Donald Trump. Well, wait a minute, didn't Mrs. Clinton get more votes? Yes. What if we did that in sports? I am a major basketball fan. What if the team that got the most points didn't win? What if that happened? What would people think? Well, why not? Well, because not everybody on the team touched the ball, therefore--even though they won by 40 points--they don't win. This doesn't make sense. This is an outdated system that does not reflect democracy, and it violates the principle of one person, one vote. Every single American, regardless of what State they live in, should be guaranteed that their individual vote matters.…





